Here’s Your Hypothetical Title Game: Texas Over USC

In real sports, Texas and USC — done for the season after beating Big 10 teams in bowl games in the past week — will watch the season finale between Florida and Oklahoma on Thursday night. In What If Sports, the Longhorns and Trojans will play for the national championship, after upsetting Florida and Oklahoma, respectively, in the semifinals.

Associated Press

Texas needed this last-minute touchdown to beat Ohio State. Would the Longhorns really have beaten Florida and USC? The closest we’ll come to an answer is computer simulations.

That’s the outcome of a simulated college-football playoff created by WhatIfSports.com, featuring champions of the 11 conferences plus five at-large teams in a hypothetical 16-team bracket. Each matchup was simulated 1,001 times before bowl season began, culminating in a 26-21 win by Texas over USC. Befitting the final round of the tournament, the championship game was in one sense the closest game of all, with Texas winning 505 simulations and USC prevailing in 496.

It’s hard to say just how well this prediction matches with what would have happened had college football had a playoff. Texas needed a last-minute drive — and a fourth down conversion by mere inches — to beat Ohio State, which in the simulated playoffs loses in the first round to Texas Tech (another real-life bowl loser), 31-21.

“I believe in the numbers and I believe the numbers — meaning that I think the results of our December Madness games represent the most likely outcomes of those contests if they were played on neutral fields in December with everyone healthy,” Paul Bessire, senior quantitative analyst and content manager for WhatIfSports, said. However, he added, “That being said, at this point Texas over Florida 69% and USC 50.4% of the time looks shakier than when we originally ran the games. It’s not inconceivable to think that the Texas team that won the Fiesta Bowl could defeat Florida or USC, but it is somewhat difficult to view that as likely.”

WhatIfSports has a mixed record when it comes to predicting actual bowl games. In the last two bowl seasons, Bessire says the site got 78% of winners correct and beat the point spread 64% of the time. But it needs an Oklahoma win tonight — WhatIfSports predicts a 34-31 Sooners win over the Gators — just to get to 50% correct on bowl winners this year.

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